“If you are attempting to study American history, and you don't understand the force of white supremacy, you fundamentally misunderstand America.”
  - Ta-Nehisi Coates

“By ‘white supremacy’ I do not mean to allude only to the self-conscious racism of white supremacist hate groups. I refer instead to a political, economic and cultural system in which whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources, conscious and unconscious ideas of white superiority and entitlement are widespread, and relations of white dominance and non-white subordination are daily reenacted across a broad array of institutions and social settings.”
  - Frances Lee Ansley

“When liberal whites fail to understand how they can and/or do embody white supremacist values and beliefs even though they may not embrace racism as prejudice or domination (especially domination that involves coercive control), they cannot recognize the ways their actions support and affirm the very structure of racist domination and oppression that they wish to see eradicated.”
  - bell hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black

“White supremacy … doesn't demand the individual participation of the singular bigot. It is a machine operating in perpetuity, because it doesn't demand that somebody be in place driving.”
  - Michael Eric Dyson

Say white supremacy and many people envision white hoods or tiki torches. Such images may generate headlines, but white supremacy manifests in other ways that are far more insidious and damaging. Culturally speaking, white supremacy is the idea that white people are better and more deserving of wealth, power, and privilege than people of color. It is a self-perpetuating system that continues to fuel colonialism, exploitation, oppressions, inequities, and the brutalities that people of color continue to endure. The 2019 Overcoming Racism Conference is dedicated to dismantling its power, its structures, and the culture that enables it to thrive. Our 2019 conference goals are for participants to:

• Acknowledge and confront the construct and legacy of white supremacy in this country
• Identify how white supremacy is embedded in the policies, practices, and structures of the criminal justice, education,  housing, wealth accrual, medical, social service, and land usage systems
•  Become familiar with tools, resources, and networks available to those who have committed themselves to removing the vestiges of white supremacy from these systems
•  Discover ways to further the internal work each of us must do in order to effectively confront institutions long grounded in white supremacy
• Learn from each other about the work currently being done to dismantle white supremacy, and how we can replicate that work in our own communities
• Creatively envision a world without white supremacy in which everyone can flourish

The Facilitating Racial Equity Collaborative (FREC) hopes to be able to share materials from 2019 Overcoming Racism Conference workshops in future webinars and/or other formats, in order to build local, state and regional capacity to understand, resist and overcome racism. Materials and learning opportunities would be provided to participants at cost (not-for-profit.) All recordings or materials would be credited to presenters.